Normandale: Unmasked

Entertainment and Death on the Protest Trail

A young woman, left paralyzed two years ago by a gunman angry over protests near Normandale Park, chose death this summer on her own terms. A lovely final remembrance followed in The Oregonian this weekend.

Many questions were left out of this sad story. It might be understandable that it’s tough to ask hard questions about a situation where one person has been shot to death and another has been left paralyzed from the shoulders down.

But Portland has a long and seemingly proud history of radicalism. The Normandale Park shooting is now part of the city’s protest culture. What did anybody learn from it?

Why, for example, did The Oregonian make no mention of Antifa in their story about the last days of “Deg.” She and her mother wanted her full name concealed “for privacy and harassment concerns given the circumstances of the attack.”

Andy Ngo would understand.

He was beaten and hospitalized by Antifa. (Powell’s didn’t keep his book, “UNMASKED: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy” on its open shelves the first couple of years it was out for fear of violence. It’s now in stock at the Burnside store but shelved under Conservatism and Libertarianism.)

Portland’s 2020 Antifa riots became internationally famous. The city’s progressive politics led to a helplessness that aided and abetted those riots. By 2022 — the year of the Normandale shootings — smaller protests still flared up regularly for various causes.

The night of the shootings it was a Justice for Patrick Kimmons march on behalf of a black man, who wounded two other black men in downtown Portland and was then killed by police. (A Multnomah County Grand Jury ruled the shooting justified.)

Deg and 60-year-old June Knightly were among a group of women who called themselves traffic safety volunteers and used their vehicles to guide and protect the marchers. On Feb. 19, 2022 they gathered at Normandale Park as they had on other occasions and other protests.

Most of the media coverage cast gunman Benjamin Smith as a right-wing extremist, who lived in the neighborhood and opened fire on unarmed women. Among the evidence that he was a right-winger was that he admired Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager in Wisconsin who successfully defended himself by killing two and wounding another after he was attacked by rioters during a racial justice protest in Wisconsin in 2020.

What went unnoticed was that in the context of Normandale, Smith was no Rittenhouse. The armed protester who shot and critically wounded Smith played the role of Rittenhouse.

Perhaps the most direct explanation of what happened at the Northeast Portland park, which is surrounded by houses and apartments, came from then-Police Chief Chuck Lovell in The New York Times. He said the shooting occurred following a confrontation between “an armed resident of the area and armed protesters.”

By all accounts, Smith was an increasingly angry man who owned several guns. To his neighbors and roommate, he ranted about the protests that took over Portland. He had been threatened by demonstrators and felt outnumbered and targeted by left-wing extremists. His brother said Smith, a skilled machinist employed in St. John’s, was hoping to move from Portland.

The women he shot at Normandale were characterized in news accounts as simply “unarmed women.”  Perhaps they were more than that. They appeared to serve as an Antifa Auxiliary — similar to the Wall of Moms who put in nightly appearances at the downtown riots (and later were put in their place by a group of black women who didn’t appreciate white ladies horning in on their cause).

Knightly, for example, was described in a laudatory Oregonian story as a “fixture of Portland’s protest movement.” It almost sounds like any protest would do —whatever the cause. It was something to do, a form of  entertainment while presumably serving a meaningful cause. In 2020 — when Covid restrictions shut down many of the usual social outlets — a protest march in honor of George Floyd went by her home. She grabbed a BLM sign and joined in.

According to The New York Times, Knightly and the other women were about a block from where Smith lived. Dajah Beck, one of the women Smith would later shoot and seriously wound, said he threatened them: “If I see you come past my house, I’ll shoot you.”

Beck said Knightly approached Smith and told him: “You’re not going to scare us. You’re not going to intimidate us.”

Smith shot her in the face.

The women didn't deserve to be shot, and Smith belongs in prison, but there are no saints in this chapter of Portland radicalism.

Knightly had problems with her knees and used a cane. What made her think it was wise to taunt Smith? Did she think the presence of an armed protester in her own camp would save her? Did it not occur to her that maybe the protests were, in fact, having an effect — they were driving a guy like Smith over the edge. Is that what she wanted?

Today, a small memorial to Knightly remains at Normandale Park. It includes a large silver tub and many bouquets of flowers, real and artificial. If you look closely on the side of the tub, someone has placed a sticker: Defund Police.

A short distance from the memorial, there is a sign posted at the edge of the park: “Baseball and softball hitting is prohibited on this soccer field due to close proximity of neighboring homes. Thanks for your cooperation!”

If an errant softball or baseball is enough to annoy neighbors, isn’t it reasonable to believe that organizing protest marches in the same vicinity would probably not be welcomed either — and might not help your cause. Provided that “cause” was the real reason you were organizing and not simply to join in some meaningful excitement with your friends.

In The Oregonian’s story of Deg’s last summer at age 32, Zane Sparling captures how unpredictable our lives are.

“On a cool Saturday evening, Deg climbed the stairs from her basement apartment for what she had no way of knowing would be the last time,” he writes.

For the next two years, Deg would lay motionless and breathe through a ventilator. Now that she’s gone, will her name join Knightly’s on the Normandale memorial? It wasn’t there this weekend.

In her honor, perhaps Portland’s Antifa Auxiliary could do some self-examination. Where exactly are their progressive politics leading Portland?

The Oregonian’s story notes that as part of Smith’s plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to charge him if Deg later died and concludes: “Regardless, the gunman won’t be eligible for parole until he’s 99.”

I covered his sentencing and wrote at the time that the well-publicized sentence Smith received may not, in fact, be the sentence he serves. (See “A Killer’s Penalty”)

Antifa sympathizers who thought protesting was going to force change might want to keep an eye on proposed legislation in support of “compassionate leave” for prison inmates. It’s a progressive cause that could help Smith.

At the time of his sentencing last year, Smith, then 44, looked a decade older and was still in a wheelchair courtesy of the gunshot he suffered from the armed protester.

This year, the Oregon Legislature considered a bill that would make compassionate leave easier for elderly or ailing inmates to receive. It was the third time the Oregon Justice Resource Center, a Portland-based nonprofit organization, proposed the bill. They have promised to bring it back.

The Oregon Justice Resource Center has a neutral-sounding name and its director, Bobbin Singh is frequently quoted in the media. He testifies before the legislature. His group’s neutral-sounding name belies a very progressive agenda as expressed on its website: “We Seek to Frustrate and Dismantle Mass Incarceration”

Click on “Issues,” and the first one is: Compassionate Leave.

There is a lengthy report on the medical and human costs of keeping elderly or sick inmates in prison.

Do the well-intentioned women of the Antifa Auxiliary understand whose side they’re on?